About | How Writing Works

Syntax:

a new way to learn

Writing

An educational project seeking to demystify the art of writing through the science of writing.

I. The Goal:

To teach students to:

make deliberate writing choices
be sharper analytical thinkers
understand the principles behind clarity and coherence
diagnose their writing mistakes and fix them

through the lens of linguistics

II. The Vision:

School curricula claim they teach students how to write, but are they right? For many graduated students, frustrating memories of the writing classroom — stringent rubrics, stiff formulas, abstract feedback, schoolmarmish "grammar" rules — capture their thirteen years' worth of writing instruction. Sure, a couple of teachers here and there might've been specially insightful, but let's be honest: most students would not raise their right hand to say that their education has taught them precisely how to organize their thoughts into phrases, sentences, paragraphs, then essays, without losing their own voices in the process.

Instead, schools model their philosophy for writing education on early language acquisition. A student merely needs to follow a teacher's suggestions, read books to pick up new words and structures, and things will eventually fall into place, just as a baby will iron out the mistake "I swimmed" after hearing her parents repeat "I swam" enough times. An authentic, natural process, as far as it goes.

But the philosophy is fraught in practice. Picking up a language as a baby is a matter of passive learning via innate instinct; learning to write, on the contrary, is not part of our biology, and requires as much conscious effort as learning to solve for x in algebra class. To wit, only the more bookish students who read for pleasure (few in number) will get enough passive exposure to written language to excel in producing their own, while most others are left to fend off compositional challenges critically underarmed.

This disparity is remarkable in our increasingly politicizing and Internet-dependent world, where people's voices are more often heard in written text than spoken word. To make a serious stand against stubborn bosses, corrupt politicians, or nationwide injustices requires a strong command over written language. In our society, to write well is to have power.

A more equitable philosophy for writing education would ensure command over written language for all. If schools across the nation taught students the principles of written language through syntax and how to apply this knowledge to their own writing, then we would be on our way to building a society where everybody could confidently state their case.

HWW is a project looking to make this proposition a reality. Our current first course is small, with just a handful of students. Our hope is that, in the coming years, more students across the country will come along to learn. Everybody deserves to learn how writing works.

III. The Learning Process:

We move from the theoretical to the practical, learning to break writing down in order to build it back up.

2. Analysis of Writing

We then learn to break sentences down into their constituent parts to describe how they're constructed.

3a. Writing Words

and Phrases

3b. Writing Single Sentences

3e. Writing Groups

of Paragraphs

3c. Writing Groups

of Sentences

3d. Writing Entire

Paragraphs

3. Writing

With our analytical groundwork laid, we learn to string words together while maintaining clarity and and coherence, a progression that starts small and becomes large, from words to paragraphs.

1. The Language

We learn to talk and think in terms of linguistics.

of Linguistics

IV. The Course:

The first course has begun and will continue until March 2021. The second course will begin in the same month shortly after the first one ends.

You can sign up for the second course here.